Postblogging Technology, March 1956, II: Delta Goes, Nixon Stays

It's too bad that there was no use or market for a high-speed delta wing fighter in the late Fifties and Sixties, and, if there was, Saunders-Roe was the ideal 
contractor to deliver it, since they were due for a win.  
By The Trempe See: http://www.1000aircraftphotos.com/Contributions/Trempe/TrempeInfo.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1785669

R_.C_.,
The Lakehouse,
Nakusp, B.C.
Canada




Dear Father:

As March melts into April here in the Bay City, I am bound to work when we are not tittering over the disaster overtaking Richard Nixon, as who doesn't want the worst for jumped-up L.A. parvenues? Do not get me wrong; I am sure that he will be the Vice-Presidential nominee in 1956 and he will probably be the Presidential candidate in 1960, but when Ike --IKE!-- stabs you in the back, what is there even left to say?

Which is quite enough politics, and since I have exhausted myself on family matters under separate cover, I will simply sign myself 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Newsweek, 19 March 1956

Letters

I'm sure there's a Britsih social historian or two working 
on a counter-narrative to "Rise of the West"
histories of public education, but it might just be the
author of the Wiki when it needs to be shouted from
the rooftops. 

Robert Hobbs of Seattle points out that the Pacific Northwest is fine. Robert Dunbar of Philadelphia thinks that Newsweek is wrong to think that the U.S. earth satellite will be visible to the naked eye. Newsweek responds that actually it is Dunbar who is wrong. Joseph Thomas, President of Lambda Deuteron (a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa) at Denison University, and Bruce Price, Pastor of First Baptist, Newport, disagree about how bad college fraternity initiations are. William Vogt shares idiotic opinions about the difference between Protestants and Catholics. Four correspondents think that it is bad that GIs get imprisoned in foreign countries, while one writes to say that the GIs probably don't get thrown in the French hoosegow as much as they ought. James Boyd of Portland nails down the real founder of the Ragged School for Orphans. (a particular Ragged School, it needs to be pointed out, as they used to be quite the affair.) Edison Marshall is glad to be reviewed at all, but . . . Duncan Blanchard has some interesting classical quotes about the role of seawater evaporation in rainfall, while Bernard Vonnegut of North Scituate embarrasses himself by trying to wedge Irving Langmuir (and by extension, his) name into a discussion of Battan and Braham's research into cloud seeding. The Wes Santee affair draws a letter from F. M. Johnston in favour of paying amateur Olympians.

For Your Information explains that the Soviets are driving for ideological and economic hegemony over Asia, and Newsweek is right there fighting back with a New Delhi bureau, to be headed by Robert Elegant, who is really smart and well educated and a swell guy, so apologies for squirrelling him off in New Delhi are in order. 

We've already heard about the Bull Pup, so here's the MGM-18 Lacrosse.
A Redstone project with a forward controller, it was deployed and withdrawn
without ever becoming operational. It turns out that it was pretty accurate 
except when someone in the vicinity was talking on the radio. Excuse me. 
It had "ECM issues."

The Periscope reports that Christian Herter backers are continuing the fight to have him replace Nixon on the Eisenhower ticket notwithstanding rumours of ill-health. I give him all the odds due to him based on the fact that there aren't any rumours going round about Nixon (glug glug). Democrats are worried that Lyndon Johnson is going to have another heart attack. Republicans and Democrats on the Hill are fighting over who is doing most about the education crisis, if there is one. The Pentagon is going to do some missile launches ahead of the Democratic nomination to take the heat off the Administration. The White House is having a panic attack over the possibility that the Russians will accept the President's nuclear warhead limitation proposal. Guys, he wasn't serious! Can't you Commies take a joke? Glenn Martin employees have teams in their intramural softball league named after two of their "top secret" missile projects. Secretary Benson has had to have his telephone number changed because he was getting heckling calls all night long. Israel's strategy in the event of a Mid-East War is to "wipe out the Jordan bulge" and the Gaza strip and occupy a "protective strip" in the Negev Desert, then ask the UN to come in and guarantee its borders. Whatever, the U.S. and Britain have been reported to say, as long as the flow of oil isn't interrupted. Iraq is backpedaling on the Baghdad Pact in response to Egyptian pressure on the Nuri regime. Allied intelligence is trying to figure out why the Russians have closed off the East German Baltic shore. Is it new missile bases? The U.S. may intervene to stop gunrunning through Libya. The British are searching Cyprus for George Grivas, the mastermind behind EOKAS. The Japanese are going to monitor U.S. atomic tests in the Pacific, and the French are in a spot over Russian offers to buy some Caravelles, since the plane's Avon engine isn't on the export list yet. Where Are They Now reports that Coke Stevenson is retired while Joseph Ball is running a freight line. 

 

The Periscope Washington Trends reports that it looks like the Administration and Congress are going to have a fight over defence policy. Which is why this column is the equal and opposite of the wild and woolly Periscope. Because it's a snore! However, there's a kicker in the tail about how the Administration thinks we can't keep Red China out of the UN forever.

National Affairs

Tired of lead stories about Ike? Here's on about Ike and Nixon! The felt need to get away from Ike lead stories being met, it's on to an Ike story in second place. Leon Volkov's box gets promoted to the second page so he can explain how the President's incautious remarks about peace and disarmament have revived the Commie peace offensive. Hmm. That's two-and-a-half pages filling in between ads. What else can is happening that we can put in the paper? Oh, right! Segregation! That's bad, right? Kinda, anyway? Southern Senators say "Blah blah Constitution blah blah can't make us stop!" But they use very moderate and restrained language, so it's okay. Stevenson and Kefauver are out there somewhere (Minnetonka, maybe?) running for election or something. It's so cute. One of Stevenson's boys made a crass statement about how the Democrats are going to run on Eisenhower's health on the grounds that it might matter for the United States if Eisenhower just dropped dead and was replaced by Dick Nixon. Democrats are also pushing back over the farm bill, and the weather is pretty crazy this month. An Ike man is going to run against Wayne Morris. Trading with the Eastern Bloc is bad but also good. Nathan Twining warns that the Red Air Force is gigantic and racing ahead in quality and unless we give the Air Force a giant bucket of money in the budget, we might as well be practicing saying "comrade" in the mirror. 

Ernest K. Lindley uses Washington Tides to explore the delicate issue of John Foster Dulles being in so far over his head that he can't even see the light any more. American foreign policy should just not be as complicated as he makes  it! A few hundred million more dollars in aid to the neutral nations would pretty much patch up all of the U.S.'s problems, properly administered, and if Dulles cannot get it done, it is up to the President. 

International

A special box introduction points out that there is a developing crisis in the Middle East involving the threat of war on Israel's border, and France and Britain's attempts to turn back the clock in North Africa and Cyprus, respectively. This leads into the main story, "Middle East: Nearer the Showdown?" David Ben-Gurion has told the Knesset that Israel will never start a war, but the prospects of peace were diminishing. Fears are focussed on Jordan, where the replacement of General Glubb might lead to the Arab Legion spearheading an attack on Israel. Israel insists that the best guarantee of peace in the Middle East is shipping Israel lots of guns. The U.S. has so far refused, backing Dag Hammerskjold's insistence that the countries of the Middle East kiss and make up or be sent to their rooms without supper and just wait till Daddy gets home. (The U.S. is sending a battalion of Marines to the Sixth Fleet, and the British are also strengthening their presence.) In Tunisia, French settlers rioted and burned the U.S. consulate and library while French police stood by. The French have now offered to pay for the damages. In Paris, Algerian residents who think that they're somehow French now just because the French say they are (look at your skin colour and take a hint!) demonstrated in front of the National Assembly and were dispersed by the Mobile Guard while French politicians blamed the whole thing on the U.S. for not being pro-French enough. In Cyprus, the story is completely different in that you have to remember how to spell the name of the archbishop of Cyprus after the government's decision to exile him, and there are no Greek Cypriots rioting in London because Lascars know how to be invisible. Not that they need to come out of the darkness of the East End when Anthony Eden is "a collapsed concertina without a squeak in him," per the Daily Herald. Sure, taunt the speed freak ahead of his private meeting with Mollet on the weekend. It'll be fine until paratroopers are raining on Athens! 

The Wiki for William Shepherd is quite something.

"Moslems on the March: 350 Million Strong: Is It Zero Hour for Holy War?" Moslems and Communists are forming an unholy alliance to overthrow colonialism probably. The Socialist International met in Zurich and agreed that they weren't in favour of global communist conspiracy. But what if? Malenkov is tagging along with Khrushchev and Bulganin in their visit to Britain, and everyone is wondering why. The latest embarrassment for good old British coal is that they're importing Russian coal now. Conservative MP William Shepherd is having an apoplectic fit over vice in the West End, which is news because it's . . . I checked the calendar, and it's March.

Shouldn't we save the sensational stories for the summer and talk about important things, like the budget? Oh. OH. Finland is having a general strike which is being negotiated to a close, which is a really boring story so here comes the editor to shake some Communism on it. Also Germany, notwithstanding the fact that the main obstacle to creating the new German Bundeswehr is the Free Democrats, not the Social Democrats. Argentina is settling down, notwithstanding the need to write a full page on church and state, although to be fair there needs to be text to wrap around pictures of the emergency air lift of iron lungs to treat this year's polio outbreak. So is Juan Peron, in exile in Paraguay. 

Business

The Periscope Business Trends reports that the business recession that won't happen will be followed by an even bigger boom than we said before, but farm incomes won't reverse their downward trend until next year. The union has rejected the mediator's proposal in the Westinghouse strike, while Lufthansa is buying 707s and KLM is buying Electras. Stavros Niarchos gets a profile.

The lead story in Business is that auto sales are recovering. In Britain, everyone is feeling the squeeze as the government tries everything to stop inflation except rolling back the tax cuts that started it. Even the thought that Macmillan might go that way has British "small-businessmen" talking about bringing Pierre Poujade over to tell them what to do. 

Products: What's New has a woodpecker-proof fiber-glass utility pole from Gar Wood Industries, the smallest and the most inconspicuous hearing aid ever, from Sonotone. Henry Hazlitt uses Business Tides to explain that Ike might be in trouble in '56 because of his roller-coaster economy. So far, so good, but Henry then goes on to blame it all on excess spending and New Dealism. He does note that between Dulles and Eisenhower's veto of the natural gas bill, it is unlikely that he'll have a Republican Congress, and, anyway, he might have a heart attack, and Adlai Stevenson is a ruthless son of a bitch. so who knows how the election will turn out? Bill Knowland says you can't take it for granted, and if Bill Knowland says it, it must be true! What Eisenhower needs to do, Henry goes on to explain, is run against the New Deal.   

Science, Medicine, Education

"7000-mph Cannon" Hermann Kurzweg, a former V-2 man somehow exiled from Redstone to the Naval Ordnance Laboratory has "revealed" in a talk to high school students that he is working on a 7000mph hypervelocity gun to test ballistic missile nosecones and solve the re-entry problem before some boring supersonic wind tunnel does it for him. While it doesn't actually work as such (7000mph is far too slow), it's cheaper than working from test shots, and maybe if he gets more money he'll build a 10,000mph version. 

"From Apes or What?" Maybe if humans separated from apes millions of years ago we didn't really evolve from apes and that would be good for reasons that don't even need to be spelled out. (N--R! N--R! Yelled the old-time Southern senator), so what about that jawbone that Joseph Huerzeler dug up twenty years ago? Maybe it's a more-human-than-ape ancestor of ours from ten million years ago!

"The Coming Avalanche" The easiest solution to the massive wave of schoolchildren coming on is to stop teaching --I mean, reduce the student-to-teacher ratio, says Beardsley Ruml to the Chicago Conference on Higher Education. Other suggestions include TV and more Federal funding, so I suspect that the higher student-teacher ratio is it. Coincidentally, a study drawing on Who's Who entries concludes that private school is better than public at least as far as your chances of getting into Who's Who goes. Periscoping Education points out that the Class of '56 is pretty lucky what with there not being enough of them to meet the need of employers. 

"The Roots of Cancer?" Otto Warburg, 1931 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine has a novel theory about the origins of cancerous cells that seems even more popularised in the pages of Medicine than the usual run of stories, but is quite promising in terms of guiding future research. At least, I don't understand how a cell can "ferment" its food! A Navy study of the effectiveness of anti-seasickness pills highlights Bonamine.

 

Art, Press, TV-Radio, Newsmakers

Bernard Buffet gets a profile, even though everyone hates him and the public is unfairly neglecting other, better French painters like an anonymous struggling American artist that Newsweek quotes.

"The Right to Report" Ben Bradlee of Newsweek has been ordered expelled from France (the order was retracted later) for being such a good reporter, Newsweek doesn't brag or anything. L'il Orphan Annie is in trouble for glorifying juvenile delinquents. 

TV-Radio seems to be (a printing error has lost the first page) a profile of Sherwood Schwartz, which I wouldn't even mention if I didn't have to introduce Periscoping TV-Radio, which has Marlene Dietrich coming out of retirement to do a "CBS spectacular" with Robert Newton. Phil Silvers will do a video version of his Broadway hit, Top Banana, and youngsters are setting library borrowing records while adult borrowing continues to decline. When asked, kids said that they were interested in things, including what they saw on TV. 

Five stars of the Silent Era turned out for a museum fund raiser in New York but I'm not going to name them because it would be too much work. Billy Rose is getting married again, which is all I'll say about that. Robert Service is still alive, fancy that. So is Lady Astor!  is in the column for saying nasty things about New York. Sir Charles Darwin (the younger, a physicist in Britain) has the honour of being the only person mentioned in the column who is in the column for the usual reasons. Earl Warren has had a grandchild, while Genevieve Earle, Vere Brabazon Ponsonby, Howard B. Myers, Raymond Hoagland, John Emerson, and John Campbell Boot have died. 

Happy Canada Day-Adjacent Day!

 Books

(If you're wondering what happened to the movie reviews, they were eaten up by a huge profile of Laurence Olivier.)

Allen French's Charles I and the Puritan Upheaval: A Study of the Causes of the Great Migration is a posthumous work by the great New England historian explaining that the Puritans were principled religious exiles. Somehow this counts as a groundbreaking work, although to be fair to French, his emphasis, as opposed to the reviewer's, is on Charles I's misrule, although because the argument promptly devolves into the Arminianism of Archbishop Laud, it returns to the old cliches quickly enough --and, yes, I understand that this is all Greek to you. But I care! L. P. Hartley,  A Perfect Woman is a psychological novel, only it's good, is the drift of the review. J. F. Powers' The Presence of Grace is a short story collection. They're very hard to review, and my review of the review is negative. Veronica Henrique's Love for a Convict is a promising early novel. 

Raymond Moley's Perspective is about how the new coal-fired aluminum plants being built along the Ohio will transform the American economy  now that coal is cheaper than hydropower and put paid to all those socialist dams up in the Pacific Northwest that are necessary to a power-hungry, labour-cheap industry that is ruining America.

If not for Henry Hazlitt, the dumbest man at Newsweek. Imagine his reputation if he'd just noticed natural gas?

 

The Engineer, 16 March 1956

Leaders

"A.C. Electrification of British Railways" The recent announcements that the £1200 million modernisation of British railways will involve shifting over from DC electrification to AC, and that vacuum brakes will be put on freight cars is good and bad. The body of the Leader lays out the impressive cost savings of modern 25kV ac over 1500V DC, while quietly leaving the presumably unnecessary expense of all those vacuum brakes to be inferred. We get some details of the high altitude test plant being built for Rolls Royce at Derby, where considerable bother is taken to feed the test engines with air at the right pressure and velocity. And, buried down at the bottom, acknowledgement of the 1132mph world speed record set by the Fairey Delta 2. 

Letter to the Editor

V. H. Brix takes over a full page with a long paragraph on top to lay out his thoughts on the theory of hydrodynamic lubrication in parallel sliding. It is in response to an article, and lays out an experiment that requires modifications of W. Lewicki's proposed theory. Literature has a review of the third edition of B. D. Richards, Flood Estimation and Control and Louis j. Murphy's The Plant Engineer's Easy Problem Solver. You should buy a new copy of Flood Estimation because it has a better treatment of the author's "unit hydrograph," and not because B. D. Richards needs a new summer cottage. Murphy's book is a convenient bound volume of charts and tables. 

J. A. Cole, "Oil Flow and Film Extent in Complete Journal Bearings" is a theory paper (with illustrative photographs) originally presented to the IME. Our American Editor joins the fray with "Automatic Thickness Control on Five Stand Tandem Cold Reduction Mill," which is an X-ray gauge method developed by US Steel and GE. The X-ray controls an electronic control system that screws down a tightener as required. Whoever is in charge of things European has been told to knock off the French dams and German shipyards and visit somewhere nice for a change, so he goes to a technical high school in Ulm. It is very nice, but it is not really engineering, so we wedge in a discussion of the new Bristol Proteus model from the Bristol Quarterly in small type and text that suggests a retyped publicity release.  It is a modification for marine use with less corrosion-susceptible alloys and gearing that makes the best use of the free-wheel turbine design to operate reversible screws. 

Letters

Credit the Spokane Spokesman-Review and 
Spokane Public Library. 

Three correspondents really liked the article about stress and "diseases of the nerves." The fourth wanted more religion. Newsweek explains what the hammer-and-sickle on the 28 November and 6 February issues mean, to Private Barbara Hackworth, of Camp Pendleton. W. B. MacDonald writes separately from Manila to explain how the 6 February image that super-imposes the hammer-and-sickle on an image of the whole Earth, makes the Russian point clear. (Except that it was a free-hand drawing by a Newsweek staff artist, and not a production of the Soviet Ministry of Subliminal Messages.) Jack Porter explains that everyone is confused about quail hunting in Georgia. C. H. Blackman points out that there is a Chaldean-speaking region of Syria. Henry Vorlicky of Pigeon Hole Parking, Spokane, Washington, asks everyone to stop violating their trademark. Stetson Grimes of Denver is happy that in the United States, the private sector can go into atomic power now that we have got over our security concerns, while utility and oil company executives write in to point out that Newsweek agrees with them that atomic power is oversold. Robert O'Malley of El Paso explains that sometimes parochial schools are integrated, but other times they are not.  For Your Information points out that Newsweek's John Madigan is cutting quite a swathe in Washington these days, and that the Red Cross is a pretty good organisation. 

Credit the incomparable RuthAS

The Periscope reports that Ike is upset that people are saying that he is dumping Nixon when actuallyl he is just giving Nixon a shove to see if he falls out of the nest. Averill Harriman is going to liven up his "inactive" campaign after the New York legislature adjourns. Val Peterson wants to leave Civil Defence for Interior now that McKay has left to run for the Senate in Oregon. Public air-to-ground phones are in the works. Scientists tell Congress that land-locked Russia will be a major maritime power within fifty years, because, "fantastic as it sounds," increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil, and natural gas will warm the Earth and render Russia's Arctic coast ice-free. 1.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide will be released over the next fifty years. British claims to have set a new world air speed record have upset Air Force and Navy pilots, who say that U.S. jets can easily win the record back, but can't because of security. A watered-down version of the Bricker Amendment is sure to pass the Senate. British paratroopers from Cyprus have been flown to Bahrain to repress riots. Libya is the next troublespot in the Middle East thanks to Soviet agents making trouble. The Arab bloc is going to accuse Israel of holding Yemeni Jews as "virtual slaves." Communist aid workers in Sudan are actually looking for uranium. The growing strength of the Red Air Force in the Far East is "amazing" USAF forces in Japan. The MVD is recalling its spies and agents for a conference in Moscow on new infiltration tactics. Former Premier Mossadegh will be making more trouble soon. The younger generation in Germany is not impressed with Hitler, while the young King of Iraq may marry a daughter of the Sultan of Morocco. Juanita Hansen is 60, and lives alone in an "ocean-front apartment," which doesn't mean quite what you would think it meant in Los Angeles, is free of her former narcotics addiction, and works as a train dispatcher on the midnight shift, where no-one bothers her. Hopefully when her SAG pension and Medicare start she'll be a bit more free to enjoy life! Laura La Plante is mostly still a mother, but is acting again.

The Periscope Washington Trends reports that because Democratic insiders don't want Kefauver, his victory in New Hampshire is leading to a boom for Harriman, especially since Democratic leaders are worried about Congress. The State Department and Administration are increasingly satisfied with our friendly relations with Russia. I'm not sure I understand this sudden "Democrats might lose Congress: push in the press. Is it because of polling, or is it the Harriman camp pushing it?

National Affairs

"Democrats: The Stuff of Party Rebellion"  Segregation. It's segregation. Southern Democrats feel like they need to shore up their flanks against outright white supremacist primary challengers, while Northern Democrats are aware that the Coloured vote is the margin of victory. Therefore Northern Democrats should cool it because of obvious reasons that don't need to be explained any more, and the party should definitely nominate Stevenson and not Kefauver. Meawnhile Leonard R. Wilson gets quite the profile because the pre-law sophomore at the University of Alabama supports segregation and race riots and isn't afraid to say so. 

"20 Cents for a Vote" Strict Federal limits on campaign spending are being evaded by citizen committees, while campaign gifts are almost impossible to trace. This week, the Senate considered a "clean elections" bill, co-sponsored by Lyndon Johnson and Bill Knowland, that would allow Presidential candidates to spend 20 cents for every vote cast in any of the last three Presidential elections and raise the overall spending limit to $12 million. Senate elections would be similarly limited by state votes with a minimum spending limit of $75,000. Small campaign contributions would be encouraged by tax deductions, and donations of more than $5000 would have to be reported. Radio and TV stations will have to give equal time to the GOP and Democratic candidates but not "fringe" parties. The President is also working on foreign aid. 

Newsweek covers Lloyd Burke's campaign against Chinese forced labour in San Francisco and California generally, as fed by the "derivative children" migration stream, which brings in labour under the pretext that the men are the foreign-born children of American citizens. Margaret Truman has brought her fiance back to meet her Dad, Ernest K. Lindley is on vacation.

The situation in Cyprus, where 18 British servicemen have been killed in the last seven months, never mind Cypriots, is getting pretty bleak. Anthony Eden says that the British have to stay on to protect their oil lease concessions, which are the last prop of the sterling, and has recently been mishandled by the State Department, which is trying to be neutral as between the British and the Greeks, and not doing very well. Arnauld de Borchegrave is in the Middle East, from which he produces a novel interpretation of events in which the Arab Legion is raring to attack Israel, Hussein cannot restrain them, and only King Faisal's offer of support sustains the Jordanian regime against pressure to attack Israel, which Egypt, which is building up its forces at El Arish, might do, as well. Hussein has refused an annual $24 million subsidy for the Arab Legion to replace the putative lost British subsidy, but where else is the money going to come from? Oh, and the sinister Communists have selected a pleasant, diplomatic person to captain the ship carrying Soviet agricultural machinery exports to Lebanon, for obvious and sinister reasons. George Meany is worried that Tito is returning to the Soviet fold, but no-one else is. A box story describes the "Twelve Days that shook Communism." That is, last month's Communist Party Congress, where Premier Khrushchev denounced the late Marshal Stalin. There has been an earthquake in Lebanon, and Premier Mollet has now ordered two of the French divisions in Germany out of a total of 100,000 men, to be airlifted to Algeria to replace released conscripts and Moslem troops being transferred to France as untrustworthy. 

Everyone in the aviation press should be embarrassed at how many times this 
has been news.

A Canadian national election could be held this year, although more likely next, and both opposition parties seem poised to run on economic nationalist platforms opposing American ownership of Canadian natural resources, after a speech to that effect by Conservative leader George Drew placed him in the same camp as the CCF. 

Business

The Periscope Business Trends reports that business thinks that it might avoid the South if this segregation thing doesn't blow over. Studebaker is looking poorly, Pullman's "Train X" is the  lightest train to ever pull into Grand Central, and British airlines are expanding the way that the British aviation industry isn't. 

The lead story in Business is about the business "war" between Chicago and New York. I assume that Chicago thinks its winning and that New York doesn't know it's happening. The new "basket of goods" with which the British measure inflation has some interesting changes (turnips and rabbit are off, because no-one eats them any more) and TVs are on. And there are some mystifying ones (pajamas are on). Products: What's New has "Deva" self-lubricating metal, a powdered iron alloy mixed with graphite, while Air-Dri has a wall-mounted thermal convection anti-dampness device. 

The Business Special Report explains at length why the boom is actually still on. A Texas homebuilder gets a profile, and Henry updates us with his position on farm subsidies in Business Tides. Turns out he's still against them. He's right, of course, and while I sniff the taint of ideology on his solution, it's a good faith offer, to give  him his due.. 

Science, Medicine, Education

"Moon's Birth" We get a report on what the launching of "the world's first artificial satellite in September 1957" will be like. The U.S. will  launch twelve satellites during the International Geophysical Year, and experts expect eight to make it into orbit. 

"Intrusion in the Sky" The owners of the Empire State Building are quite pleased that they will soon have massive spotlights sweeping the sky making them a beacon for miles around. Many other people, such as astronomers and bird watchers, are not as impressed. 

"Venture Into Madness" Dr. John Lilly of the National Institute of Mental Health recently did an experiment where he tried to drive himself crazy, just to see what it is like, mainly by using an isolation tank. It didn't actually drive him crazy, but then he only spent three  hours in  it. He thinks it might be good for brainwashing. 

"Conquering the Deadly" Doctors have found a new test for galactosemia, the inherited blood disease related to the inability to digest milk, which that can kill or cripple newborns. The test is expected to greatly reduce mortality.

There's going to be an educational Museum of Immigration at the Statue of Liberty, Russians language studies are taking off in the U.S., and Guy H. Wells, the ex-president of the Georgia State College for Women, has had his pension discontinued for being anti-segregation. 

Art, TV-Radio, Press, Newsmakers

We get a bit of the visual arts in Arts this week, but confined to a painting prize to be offered by the Guggenheim and a showing of the National Gallery's holdings illustrated by a Raphael. 

Fred Allen gets a long and generous obituary in TV-Radio. The feature is rounded out by a series of shorter stories. Noel Coward has been fired by Ford Theatre for being too high-brow, Nanette Fabray is divorcing Sid Caesar, and Jerry Lewis and the Emmys have fallen into a controversy over the Emmys offering Lewis a hosting gig, while not giving Dean Martin a nomination for something he did.

William Faulkner is against segregation but also against Federal integration. "I don't  like enforced integration any more than I like segregation [but] if I had to choose between the United States government and Mississippi . . . I would choose Mississippi, even if it meant going out on the street and shooting Negroes." The Express and The Observer are having a press war in Britain over the Reverend Basil Andrews, who has either been ruthlessly handled by The Express, or is a dab hand at controversy who has manipulated The Observer into his corner. Ringling Brothers has changed its press representation by firing the old crowd and hiring a new one.  

The Maharajah of Baroda, a British hiking club that re-enacted Harold Godwinson's epic but misguided march from Stamford Bridge to Hastings, Juan Peron, Carl Sandburg, Ruth St. Denis, Grace Kelly, Bill Maudlin, and Luis Dominguin ("the finest bulfighter alive") are in the column for the usual reasons. Okay, no, the hiking club evidently had a lot of fun. Rita Gam is married, John S. Coleman is the new President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Boleslaw Beirut, Daniel C. Jackling, John A. Park, Harry Soderman, and Irene Joliot-Curie have died. 

Movies

Paramount's Anything Goes is not a very good movie adaptation of the Cole Porter hit. The cinematography is grand (VitaVision and Technicolor) and the productions are lavish, but the music is not well staged. A dubbed Italian version of Madame Butterfly has Japanese props and even some Japanese stars, and the dubbing is good. Two other Italian filmed operas, House of Ricordi and Don Giovani, also get notices. They are hardly worth the bother.

Books

Helen Keller's memoirs are out. David Daiches' Two Worlds: A Jewish Childhood in Edinburgh is mainly a loving treatment of his father and a worthy read. Edmund Wilson's Red, Black, Blond and Olive is a reprinting of his reporting from his 1935 Soviet Union trip. Also a worthy read. Captain of the Queens: The Autobiography of Captain Harry Grattidge, as Told to Richard Collier is the life of a Cunards man. 

Raymond Moley uses Perspectives to get to the bottom of the Nixon rumour campaign. I expect Moley to be a Nixon man, so I will forgive a defence of the man, and incidentally of Ike, who does not come off well from the whole thing, if he was trying to throw Nixon from the platform by under-handed means. I will not forgive a plug for Ralph de Toledano's latest, a Nixon hagiography.  It's Nixon's right to have a campaign biography, but he could have found many people, even many wild-eyed conservatives, more worthy of the contract than de Toledano. 

The Engineer, 23 March 1956

Leaders

"Railway Brakes" Time to let the British Transport Commission have it! Yes, all freight vehicles in the country need continuous automatic brakes. It is a long-overdue improvement. Vacuum brakes are not good enough for heavy freight. Air brakes are preferred, and the BTC is being seduced by the lower cost of the transition, since vacuum brakes are already in wide use on passenger cars and special freight runs. The instrument setup for measuring the record-setting speed of the Fairey Delta 2 is laid out in detail. It is hard and expensive to homologue a world air speed record because it's up there, and we're down here! "First Electric Train Fitted with Germanium Rectifier" is noticed. All these DC/AC transitions have to be handled by something, and that's a lot of current, so no junk good enough for autos and computers, please!

Literature has J. Shapiro, Principles of Helicopter Engineering, M. Smolira, Analysis of Structures, S. V. Rainey and H. W. Hogben, The Elements of Industrial Radiography, and Brazing, by the British Welding Research Association. The Shapiro book is good and lucid, the Smolira book is idiosyncratic and obscure, although a labour of love.  The two industrial association pamphlets do what they need to do. 

J. A. Cole, "Oil Flow and Film Extent in Complete Journal Bearings" is another paper presented at the IME, a more empirical investigation, full of graphs instead of last week's systems of partial differential equations. At least everyone's tastes are satisfied, and there are more pictures of bearings in mid-bear at the end. The Engravings of 1862 feature is heard from again, and then it is off to survey "Industrial Progress in Australlia," giving Our American Editor and Our Anonymous Continental Visitor a week off, much appreciated all around. Capsule reviews of two reference books, one for electrical engineers, another on Non-Destructive Testing, are for some reason set off to end the issue. At least the typeface isn't shrunk to fit! Oh, and as for the Australians, a bit of shipbuilding, some iron and steel, and roasting pyrites for sulphuric acid.  

The Engineer, 30 March 1956

Leaders

First, the printer's strike is over, although not in time for a full-length issue. Second, the annual report of the DSIR once again pleads for more money for scientific research. The Engineer only adds that more money should come with more publications. One final Leader points out that something Michael Farraday-related is being torn down in the interests of the forward march of progress, and that worthies are meeting to discuss a monument to that  swell fellow. 

A Seven Day Journal returns, still with no satisfyingly antique hyphen, to notice that the Commons is starting to notice unemployment, that the IME, INA, and Machine Tool Trade Association are having parties. The Minister of Supply was up to Radlett to see the new Handley Page assembly hall, celebrate the Victor, and warn the industry of hard times ahead. London Council has approved another housing estate, with two more to follow. They will be a mix of high rises and concrete "maisonettes." English Electric is opening a computing centre in London. 

100 Years Ago in The Engineer (now that there can be such a feature!) celebrates the new Municipal Board of Works but deprecates the delay until autumn for proposals to deal with London's sewage runoff. That's another cholera season wasted!  

Literature has Les Barrages et Voute Mince, by Jean Lombard (French, so about dams and barrages, of course), a book from Germany about the role of the technnical high schools in business education, which is short, because real businessmen go to the same private schools and ancient universities their forefathers attended before them! R. Enyedy's Handbook of Barrel Finishing seems a bit archaic for our times, but a good reminder that it was once an important matter, and also that the trade has moved on to the "barrel finishing" of things that aren't barrels. 

In the days when barrel finishers finished barrels, they carved these by hand and
put them in the kind of equipment you see in the engravings above.

F. A. L. Winternitz, "Effects of Vibration on Pitot Probe Readings" is a "continuation and extension" of a recent report to The Engineer, because the subject is just so important. Have no fear, though, P. M. Woodbridge, your "Helix Angle Corrections Using Non-Differential Hobbing" won't be driven from the issue, because the strike is over! Neither is a thrilling visit to the Electrical Engineers Exhibition at Earl's Court, where Ferranti showed its new Mercury and Pegasus computers, BTH and Brush had massive power transmission equipment in time for the announcement on AC power for the rails, and Laurence Scott showed some automatic controls. This week we have Engravings of 1863, and an illustrated advertorial for the Napier Gazelle for some visual flair. 

To give foreign (Commonwealth) parts their due times two, V. S. Swaminathan does "Oil Refining in Australia," starting with a visit to the Kwinana refinery. 

Kwinanan Refinery, Fremantle, from Chalk Hill Lookout. By Calistemon - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81479561